String Quartet No. 1: The Awakening sees the string quartet augmented by the incorporation of an accompanying digital audio part that draws out the inherent musicality of both Inuit throat singing and locomotives. Hatzis samples these sounds in ways that can give the impression of vague memories materialising and then receding, while in other moments they come into sharp focus, the rhythmic nature of these sound sources becoming a driving force alongside the quartet as the piece accumulates momentum and urgency. At other times the quartet's material is underpinned by synthesizer textures that appear in turn as cavernous low chords, playful twinkling, or mutated simulations of ricochet bowing that extend the timbral palette of the live players. The emotional terrain of the work ranges from poignant to hostile to light-hearted, with these shadings realised through demanding but captivating string writing that employs fluid, microtonal glissandi, forceful tremolo bowing and expressive, mournful melodic lines. After trading statements with the quartet in the work's energetic climax, the digital audio departs, leaving the unaccompanied players to see out a final extended passage that reprises the work's sombre thematic material.
String Quartet No. 1: The Awakening was a turning point in my career as a composer. It was composed at a time in my life which could best be described as a crossroads – musical and otherwise. The two most prominent and immediately recognizable references in this work are Inuit throat singers and locomotive engines. The former had been haunting me since 1992, the year I worked on a CBC radio documentary, The Idea of Canada. It was then that I first became exposed to the chanting and vocal games of the native culture of northern Canada, and this work was the first of a number of projects inspired by this culture. The emotional tone of this work was set by the news of an alarming increase in the suicide rate among Inuit youth during the winter of 1994, preceded by the constitutional turmoil two years earlier, when Canadians refused to make their country's aboriginal people a constitutionally recognized society.
The sound of the locomotive engines had been haunting me since my early childhood. My father was a railway engineer in Volos, my hometown in Greece, at a time when the train was still the primary means of intercity travel. Occasionally my father would take me aboard the locomotive engine of a miniature train for trips up Mount Pelion, the seat of the mythological Centaurs. The "dragon train", as I used to call it, which was actually transformed into a dragon during carnival, left a strong impression on me. The locomotive's hungry, fiery mouth, with my father constantly feeding it coal, and the loud sounds it produced, especially the limpid triple beat the of the wheels against the rails, were among the most awesome visual and acoustical images of my childhood.
Eventually, all these sounds – the locomotives, the locomotive-like throat singing and the constant up-bow down-bow articulations of the strings – became a metaphor for primal breathing, Yin and Yang, the endless cycle of creation and destruction which determines the fate of individuals, nations and humanity as a whole.
There are countless references and cross-references in this work that need not be mentioned, except one – the solo cello melody that follows the opening section of the piece. This melody and its ensuing development is a musical affirmation of my faith in the divine and its ability to bring balance, resolution and simplicity in the midst of all the overwhelming complexity we have brought upon ourselves and others.
The different components in Hatzis' composition compound in a truly striking and suggestive manner. The music is solidly existential. It personifies life in general and does not shirk from being touching. It reflects emotions, longings and memories with its all-embracing sounds. The composition is simply sensational – disguised as excellent, challenging chamber music.
